Meth blinds us to others' pain

Editor's note: The following is an editorial published by a sister Gannett newspaper, but it is reprinted here because the message delivered is important and could easily be written about Ohio and its people.

Once, Tennessee's small towns and cities had hope.

Sometimes there wasn't enough work for everyone to make a good living. A dry spell might make it a tough year for the local farms. And sure, things could get boring. It's all a part of living in a small town.

But at least the towns were not ravaged by drug addiction and crimes committed to feed that addiction. The sickness of methamphetamine has gripped Tennessee by the throat and won't let go.

A recent series in the Tennessean took journalists into some of these communities, from Dyer County on the Mississippi River to Carter County in the mountains bordering on North Carolina. Meth production has evolved from the labs in shacks in the woods to "shake and bake" operations you can carry in a soda bottle, and that portability has spread this wretched and deadly drug through every county in the state.

Meth is so insidious in its level of addiction and damage to the user's body that it puts pain pills and heroin to shame. Its chemistry is so volatile that if using the drug doesn't maim or kill you, being around those who manufacture it will. There is a whole industry built around hazardous cleanup of meth-lab sites.

The addiction causes the family and friends of addicts to lie, steal and cheat to help them get a little more crank. Meth cooks hire homeless people off the streets and turn them into "smurfs" to supply them with the over-the-counter ingredients to keep production going.

And it keeps on going - aided by a pharmaceutical industry campaign to prevent lawmakers from approving a prescription requirement for certain cold medications.

Law enforcement officials, who are on the front line of meth crime and cleanup in counties such as Dyer and Carter, have made thousands of arrests, often having to turn meth-world cronies against each other in order to catch the biggest cooks. And still they will tell you that they will not be able to significantly reduce meth's presence in their communities until the supply of ingredients is cut off.

Pharmaceutical lobbyists tout current systems designed to restrict the ability of meth makers to obtain ingredients, but they cause no more inconvenience to purchasers for illegal use than for legal use. Their dollars go into lawmakers' campaign pockets to prevent restrictions that would actually be effective against this scourge.

A prescription requirement might be an imposition for some law-abiding people. How much of an imposition is the $1.6 billion every year that Tennesseans pay for health costs of meth users, cleanup of lab sites, crimes committed by meth dealers and users, and for the hundreds of children who end up in state custody because they are abandoned or abused by their meth-addicted parents?

Don't think for another moment that you can say you are a Tennessean and this is not your problem, too. We all have a meth problem.